CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A chemical spill left the water for 300,000 people in and around West Virginia’s capital city stained blue-green and smelling like licorice, with officials saying Friday it was unclear when it might again be safe.

Federal authorities began investigating how the foaming agent escaped a chemical plant and seeped into the Elk River. Just how much of the chemical leaked into the river was not yet known.

Officials were working with the company that makes the chemical to determine how much can be in the water without it posing harm to residents, said West Virginia American Water president Jeff McIntyre.

“We don’t know that the water’s not safe,” he said. “But I can’t say that it is safe.”

For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the system until it’s in low enough concentrations to be safe, a process that could take days.

Officials and experts said the chemical isn’t deadly. However, people across nine counties were told not to so much as wash their clothes in water affected. The compound can cause skin irritation and rashes to vomiting and diarrhea.

No more than six people have been brought into emergency rooms with symptoms that might stem from the chemical, and none were in serious or critical condition, said State Department of Health & Human Resources Secretary Karen L. Bowling.

The spill brought West Virginia’s most populous city and nearby areas to a virtual standstill, closing schools and offices and forcing the legislature to cancel its business for the day. Officials focused on getting water to people who needed it.

“If you are low on bottled water, don’t panic because help is on the way,” said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin at a news conference Friday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency planned to deliver more than a million liters of water from nearby Maryland. Several companies were sending bottled water and other supplies, including Pepsi and the Coca-Cola Co., Tomblin said.

The company where the leak occurred, Freedom Industries, was ordered to stop storing chemicals in areas where they could flow into the retention pond that failed in Thursday’s leak, said state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Aluise.

The tank that leaked holds at least 40,000 gallons, Aluise said, though officials think no more than 5,000 gallons leaked from the tank. Some was contained before escaping into the river, he said.

Late Friday, officials at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection ordered Freedom Enterprises to remove all the chemicals in 14 above-ground storage tanks near the Elk River within 24 hours.

The primary component in the foaming agent that leaked is the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol. The agent is mixed with ground-up coal to separate it from soil and rock particles, said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute.

The chemical is water-soluble, meaning it cannot be removed with surface booms that are sometimes effective in capturing spilled oil.

Spain came under repeated attack starting Thursday in what authorities called linked terrorist incidents, when a driver swerved a van into crowds in Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas district, killing more than a dozen people and injuring scores of others. Early Friday, an attempted attack unfolded in a town down the coast

If there’s one superhero character whose rise might be most tied to the events of World War II, it is Captain America, who emerged from the minds of legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and sprung forth from an iconic 1941 debut cover on which Cap smacks Hitler right in the kisser.

A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”